Ever since Yahoo! took a stance against images near their contextual ads, it has appeared Google has done the same. Many threads discussed that Google no longer felt it was acceptable to put images near the ads, because they unfairly drove a higher click-through rate.
A DigitalPoint Forum thread spots that Google has showcased a site in their case studies that uses images near ads to increase their click-through rate. Here is an image I snapped from this page, with an image near the ad.
So is this specific implementation acceptable?
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.